“People are hungry for local food,” Emily Taaroa said on a bright Saturday morning as she walked between homemade chicken pens on 5.5 acres of Keaau land.
Grass between the pens was mowed close to the ground, the better to discourage mongoose from venturing close to the hundreds of Cornish Rock chickens cheeping to each other as they pecked the ground and drank sips of water.
It’s been 2 1/2 years since Taaroa and husband, Yoric, founded Punachicks Farm, seeking to fill an unmistakable void in the local food scene: poultry.
And there’s little doubt they’ve exceeded their own expectations, having tripled production from 200 birds per month in their first year to about 600 per month now. They supply chickens to health food stores, hotels and restaurants around the Big Island, and ship to Oahu and Maui, in addition to providing birds to their regular customers who come to Punachicks every other week to pick up orders.
“We see it as a service to the community,” Taaroa said. “It’s farming — you’re not going to get rich on it, but it’s worthwhile.”
Successful farm ventures don’t arrive ready-made; they come piece by piece (“My dad built us our first plucker for my Christmas present, when we first started,” Taaroa said) and depend on a steady input of time and labor.
It helps if there’s ready-made demand, though.
